Career burglar led theft ring

Published 7:43 pm, Thursday, January 3, 2013

TROY — A career burglar who faced murder charges in the 1980s and was nearly killed during a feud with a rival in a 1999 shooting, pleaded guilty to attempted burglary Thursday.

Edgar Saunders Sr., 47, appeared before Judge Andrew Ceresia and admitted he was the ringleader in an April theft of copper pipe, a refrigerator, dishwasher, two television sets and even the bathroom sink, from a Congress Street apartment building.

"I told the guys to go into the building and get the scrap metal," Saunders told Ceresia.

The other four people involved in the case have already pleaded guilty in exchange for for various sentences.

Saunders, who will be sentenced to to 4 ½ years in prison at a later date, is well known to Rensselaer County law enforcement officials and has a criminal career dating back to the 1980s. He was most recently in state prison for four years for a 2003 burglary conviction.

In August, 1999, Saunders was shot by Walter Demeritt in an attempt to end a weeks-long feud between the former drinking buddies. Demeritt ambushed Saunders with a shotgun as Saunders drove his pickup truck along Bly Hollow Road. Demeritt was convicted a year later and was sentenced to 25 years in prison. Saunders was hit in the arm and hand by birdshot.

During the Demeritt trial, Saunders was referred to as a ''one-man crime spree'' by the defense and admitted on the stand he'd been arrested close to 30 times over the last 18 years for a range of crimes from petty larceny to deerjacking.

Before the shooting, Saunders was arrested for threatening Demeritt with a heavy wooden hammer. The pair had bickered over some old mattresses that Saunders had dumped on Demeritt's property and refused to remove.

When Saunders was 17 years old, he and another man were charged with the 1982 murder of 80-year-old Henry "Rastus" Bugbee in his Berlin trailer. They were acquitted a year later at a trial in which defense attorneys, and even a judge, said the investigation was botched. Evidence was lost, police testimony was contradictory and a surprise witness emerged, giving the youths an alibi.

According to statements introduced at the trial, Hall and Saunders were in the progress of burglarizing Bugbee's trailer when his pet beagle approached them. The dog was beaten with a shovel and killed.

Bugbee, who apparently responded to the cries of his dog, was also struck on the head with a shovel, knocked to the ground and struck again with the tool. A pathologist testified that Bugbee died of a heart attack, but the prosecution alleged the beating contributed to his death.